It was expected that Donald Trump’s measures, in all sections, would barely take his position. And now it touched technology and defense. Inspired by the famous iron dome (Iron Dome) of Israel, a project developed by the Raytheon and Rafael firms for the Israeli army, Trump has proposed bring back a direct plan since the time of the Cold War, His own shield in heaven.
But, despite the huge budget in defense that Trump has, Trump’s executive order to create a “next -generation antimile defense shield that allows his citizens to defend the critical infrastructure against any foreign air attack on the homeland” is, it is, it is In the best case, technical and budgetary.
The first obstacle is obviously the size. Israel is a little smaller than the community of Valencia, while the United States is more than 400 times larger than Israel.
While the iron dome system is designed to protect cities or facilities of missile and drones threats of relatively short range, Around 80 kilometers, the geography of the country and the surrounding countries, they would only be efficient in front of an attack that departed from Canada or Mexico… and in cities that were 80 kilometers from the border, which reduces its number to a minimum.
“Each iron dome system can defend an area of approximately 400 square kilometers -explains nuclear analyst Joe Cortione -. We would need to deploy more than 24,700 iron dome batteries to defend the 95 million square kilometers of the continental United States. 100 million dollars per drums, that would be approximately 2,470,000,000 dollars. ”
And this system of 2.4 billion euros would be good only against relatively small and slow weapons, not against intercontinental ballistic missiles. However, the Trump project has a twist: It would be a completely different system, one that, among other things, puts interceptive weapons in orbit. At least this is read in the executive order that states that the project pursues the “defense of the United States against ballistic, hypersonic missiles, advanced cruise missiles and other next -generation air attacks by similar, almost similar and rebellious adversaries” .
The idea of the interceptors located in orbit has existed since the DandEach of 1960, when the Ballistic Missile Boost Intercept, or Bambi was proposed, but never builteither. The concept resurfaced in 1983, under the strategic defense initiative of President Ronald Reagan, with the proposal of Brilliant pebbles (bright pebbles), that proposed a network of small and free satellites designed to intercept intercontinental ballistic missiles. The idea was finally discarded due to technological obstacles, as well as concerns about the increase in the cost of putting weapons in space.
Another more recent antecedent comes from Trump himself who, in 2018, proposed A concept of space weapon based on a beam of particles in space. But finally he filed the idea due to the enormous amount of energy necessary to destroy a missile with directed energy. The idea becomes more feasible with space missiles, instead of lasers or particles, but remains incredibly difficult and expensive.
For all this project there would be voices against, such as Laura Grego, a scientist of the global security program of the Union of concerned scientists, who described Trump’s idea as a fantasy: “The iron dome is designed to intercept short -range rockets and artillery projectiles, which is a very different threat to long -range ballistic missiles that would point to the US. UU. Interception of intercontinental ballistic missiles requires a completely different and much more complex system. ”
But there are also voices in favor, such as Rebeccah Heinrichs, a member of the Hudson Institute, who considers the project as a “monumental jump in politics”, but but more than satellites should be formed by a layer defense system in layers that include sensors and interceptors based in space for “provide the necessary coverage and efficiency ”and others on the mainland.
Seen all this, Trump’s iron dome project could be a combination of satellites and land batteries that protect the country from both intercontinental attacks and smaller drones or missiles.